The Truth About the Instagram Fitness Community

Hi guys!

If you’re reading this, you’re probably involved in the Instagram fitness community to some degree.

I’m about a month and a half in my foray into using Instagram specifically for fitness. While I’ve been pursuing sports my whole life, I only recently started sharing what I do in the gym publicly. Although I’m no noob to Instagram (no shade to noobs though, love ‘em too), I’ve been following along on the sidelines, invisibly scrolling through the Instagram fitness feed as an bystander, instead of as a participant. I wanted to be a part of it, but I wasn’t sure how.

I thought that if I put my personal fitness life out there, it would be like shooting content into a black hole, and I probably wouldn’t get much of a response. If any.

I didn’t really know what to expect when I created The Mind Gym and started sharing more, but I was shocked at what I found—and within only about a week’s time.

So today I want to share some initial thoughts (and hear yours!) regarding Instagram, specifically as a platform for the fitness community.

1. Breadth of fitness interest groups

My first observation about the fitness community was the sheer number of different fitness niches available to any given follower. The Instagram fitness landscape is vast and inclusive of concentrations such as powerlifters, bodybuilders, bikini girls, BBG girls, fitness nuts, CPTs, athletes, cardio enthusiasts—you name it. I even stumbled upon a Complex Non Linear Movement fitness guru (@themovproject). But that’s not to say it’s segregated; The different enthusiasts cross-pollinate. I see people of all disciplines influencing one another in their broad followings and followers, the photos they like, and the content they engage with through commenting. This really cannot be overlooked, as the pooled knowledge lends itself to a much deeper, comprehensive, and profound understanding of the body, equipment, and practices favored in each niche. And this all contributes to a more informed community.

I think that is just brilliant. We can all learn things from each other no matter our fitness level or fitness niche. It’s informal education at its most engaging.

2. Women actually being nice to other women

How bad is it that I was expecting to experience woman-on-woman hate, and if not to that extent, then just a general lack of support from my fellow ladies? Perhaps it’s not that crazy, as this is a sad reality and the majority of us women know what I’m talking about.

Instagram is surprisingly body pos as far as women speaking to other women goes. Of course, there is the occasional shade, but generally speaking, that kind of behavior is looked down upon. Aside from the bot-generated triple flame emoji, clapping hands, or 100 100 100 comments, usually what women have to say to each other is really tolerant and supportive.

How f-ing awesome is that? It has totally warmed my heart to get both public and private DMs from girls telling me that they love my videos, that they want to workout with me, or just overall feel like expressing nice, positive things to other people in their free time. How surreal. And badass. It's cool to be a nice human being, and it’s a trend I’m going to personally work at to keep going.

3. Some spammers are genuine, but some are from hell

In most cases, spammers are just that—people sending unsolicited messages in phishing attempts to obtain some kind of personal information. But other times, spammers are just people trying to reach out to like-minded people to share a piece of information or to tell them about a product they genuinely use and think others might enjoy too.

I get a lot of DMs from people who work for itworks, Isagenix, and online coaching companies like Beachbody. Generally, the interactions I have with these people are pleasant. They aren't trying to get me to buy a product I don't like, or join their team if it's not for me. They've taken the time to look at my profile and to try to get to know me, and if they've messaged me, they seem to believe in the potential of a mutually beneficial relationship. But this section isn't about them.

This section is more about my run-in with the dark side of DM...with the real spammers and harassers. I had an alarming incident with one of these individuals that momentarily made me question my openness on Instagram. A person with the Instagram handle @house_of_diddie messaged me regarding a potential sponsorship. I currently have a sponsorship through Instagram for a yoga clothing company, and so I was already familiar with how this should probably go down. No immediate alarms went off, but boy was I in for a scare.

This person asked me a couple questions about how often I trained, for starters. They told me that they were a new boutique agency located out of NYC and LA looking for reps to represent different aspects of their brand vision, mainly broken down by specific muscle groups. Then things got weird. They asked if I enjoyed training my glutes and if I considered my glutes to be "thick and protruding." They asked me for more pictures.

Then they sent me a pic of a woman who they claimed was one of their models and asked if I thought she might have "protruding glutes." At this point I told them that these were unusual questions and I did not see how they were relevant to our initial conversation. Then I did a quick background check, and the company didn't even show up in a Google search. I politely told them that I was sorry I could not help them and wished them good luck with their company.

But it wasn't over. Suddenly they went from 1 to 100 on me, claiming that they were downloading my entire camera roll "via remote port connection." Yea, what the f is that, is that a made-up thing? It sounded way too legit for comfort. I reported and blocked them, and then sat back to take small consolation in the fact that if they really did download my camera roll, they could enjoy feasting their pervy little eyes on a small collection of my friends' cat pics (I don't even own a cat), PG-rated snapchat selfies, and a shit ton of already-public workout videos, which you can see on my page.

Be open, but beware of the bad ones.

4. Creativity boost

Back to the good things in life. Insta is a great resource to turn to when you've been feeling less motivated at the gym. It provides tons of free workouts to try, just check the discover page while heading to the gym. It's also a great way to meet like-minded people. I'm secretly hoping to meet my next besti. Pls reach out if you have tried every halo top ice cream flavor and annoy your friends when you talk about all things booty-gainly. I am your match.

5. Superficiality is opt-in, not opt-out

Yes, perhaps Instagram being a visual platform may lend itself to vanity, but superficiality can be avoided by choice, in my opinion. Like I said earlier, there are so many people to follow, and you don't have to follow supermodels. Or you can, if that motivates you. The choice is up to you and you can curate your feed to suit your taste.

So, the truth about Instagram? The truth is that the Instragram fitness community is seriously rocking out. I sincerely urge anyone with a slight interest in fitness to start participating more in the community. <3